I'm wondering what Mr. Truchard's list of Grand Challenges might have looked like 10 or 20 years ago, and what specific NI inventions helped solve those problems. I like his stuff. You need to have very big goals in order to do great things.

Based on Chuck's article, it looks like NI pulled off a nice balancing act by supporting its lofty goals of working on society's biggest problems with a peak at some specific technology initiatives that do just that. Showing how their tools can be parlayed into real-world innovations is just what the doctor ordered in terms of motivating and keeping engineers engaged.

NI has become a very interesting company is recent years. They're been stretching quite bit. I've wondered was was behind it. Chuck's article spells it out. It's good to see big thinking based on engineering.

It is good to see NI encouraging their employees to tackle society's greatest challenges. By creating new tools and having daily conversations ideas can be tossed around and improved to tackle big issues head on.

Industrial workplaces are governed by OSHA rules, but this isn’t to say that rules are always followed. While injuries happen on production floors for a variety of reasons, of the top 10 OSHA rules that are most often ignored in industrial settings, two directly involve machine design: lockout/tagout procedures (LO/TO) and machine guarding.

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